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She might have been desperate, but I was fucking starving.
Tilting her head back, I devoured her trust, feasted on the version of me that she saw in her mind. I wanted to digest him, embody him, so that one day, I might become worthy of the admiration and gratitude I tasted on her lips.
“Tell me you’re real,” she whispered against my mouth, clutching the sides of my neck as if I might disappear. As if she was just as afraid of losing this as I was. “Tell me I’m not crazy.”
Twisting my hands in her hair, I dropped my forehead to hers and willed myself to say the words she longed to hear. But I couldn’t. Not because they wouldn’t come, but because they would be a lie. Nothing about me was real, not the version she saw anyway. So, instead, I pressed her back against the cave wall and poured every word I couldn’t say directly down her fucking throat.
I’m sorry.
I need you.
Don’t hate me.
Clover’s tears of joy seeped into my tongue as she smiled against my mouth. They tasted like a drug I’d never had, but had been born addicted to, and any hope I had of behaving like a better man disappeared the moment she gripped my shoulder blades and arched her body against mine.
We became a desperate riot of pleasure and pain, soothing tongues and ravenous teeth, clawing hands and tender lips. Bracing myself on the wall with my forearm, I sucked a trail of starving kisses along her jaw as Clover draped her battered thigh over my hip and pulled my body flush against hers. She was still seeking comfort, seeking an escape from her pain, and I was too far gone to deny her.
A sharp pain throbbed in my side as I ground against her, but it was nothing compared to the invisible blade that pierced my heart a moment later when the Devil finally came to collect, ripping Clover out of my arms with a single flash of lightning.
The earthshaking clap of thunder that followed was drowned out by Clover’s terrified scream as she dropped to the ground and covered her head with both hands.
The next boom made her jump and curl in on herself even more.
I stared at her in absolute horror as the realization of what was happening slowly took hold.
I had done this to her.
And she didn’t even know it.
Sitting against the wall next to her, I debated what to do before I finally pulled the cowering girl into my lap, gritting my teeth as pain shot through my side.
“They’re back,” Clover cried, burying her face in my neck.
They.
As if I wasn’t one of them. As if I hadn’t led the fucking charge.
Guilt twisted in my guts as I lifted a finger and pointed at the entrance of the cave and the darkness beyond.
“Look,” I managed to say through the vise closing around my throat. “It’s just thunder. See?”
Clover lifted her head just in time to see the next flash of lightning, and after tensing in fear, she suddenly relaxed. Slumping against my chest, exhausted and embarrassed from her panic attack, Clover hid her face against my neck and apologized.
I’d broken her, and she was apologizing for it.
Cradling her tear-streaked cheek, I rested my chin on the top of her head and stroked her arm with my free hand. I comforted her like I should have before, and with every stroke, I silently begged for her forgiveness.
Clover clung to my body and drank in my remorse, not realizing what it was. I wasn’t the enemy to her anymore—I was a hero, a good guy—and suddenly, I understood why the Devil had let me kiss her.
At first, my punishment had been her suffering.
Then, it had been her silence.
Now, it was my guilt, which ate away at me like a thousand maggots as the victim of my crimes lay shattered in my arms.
CHAPTER 15
CLOVER
